The Woman Behind The Curtain is a story from the When The Lights Go Out series. If you haven't read the introduction, consider giving it a read here first. After the introduction, the stories from this series can be read in any order as they all exist within the same universe.
This story is a male/female erotica short story.
People were always surprised when I told them what I did for a living.
“A flower shop?” they’d say. “Really, Owen? Like… with flowers?”
Yes, a flower shop. The Enchanted Florist, to be exact, prominently located beside the Perks It Up coffee shop on Minwack Drive in Minwack Falls. People had a hard time accepting the fact that a guy like me owned that shop. Maybe it was because I looked like the kind of guy who worked with his hands, but not with something as delicate as flowers.
I couldn’t help it, though. I loved flowers. Always had, and likely always will. Flowers are simple. They’re there to be pretty, to make people smile, and to fade away when they’ve served their purpose. You give them a little bit of your time, your attention, the right amount of water and sunlight, and they’ll give you simple beauty. They don’t talk back, they don’t make excuses, they simply are.
Unlike people, who simply want everything.
I had two girls working for me in the shop. Not that I only hired girls or anything, but they did fill a role I couldn’t. Some customers found having a tall man with large hands behind the counter off-putting, so I got the girls to take orders and talk to the customers while I did the arrangements and all the behind-the-scenes stuff.
That particular day, Maria had called in sick, so I was stuck in the shop by myself until Lyla’s shift started. Lyla, being Lyla, showed up at twelve minutes after three for her three o’clock shift.
“The lateness is an issue, Lyla,” I said warningly as the front door chimed. My back was to the counter, but I knew it was her from the stomping sound of her Doc Martens.
“It’s hot as balls out there, Owen,” she replied. “I was walking as fast as I could. Any faster and I would’ve got heatstroke.”
“Well, luckily the store is air-conditioned,” I said. “And you can always sit in the cooler with the flowers. In fact, why don’t you do that? Take the inventory book with you.”
“Give me, like, three minutes to get ready,” she grumbled.
“You’re already late.”
“Fine,” she snapped, followed by the sound of her shoving her purse beneath the till. “I’ll just work my whole shift like this, shall I? Maybe I can rub some gardenias under my arms, just in case any customers happen to be offended by righteously awful B.O.”
I finally turned around and had to press my lips together. Lyla would have probably lost her mind if I laughed at her, but it was a fight not to. The top of her hair was matted to her head, but the rest of it poofed out in a frizzy mass of strands. Her glasses were slightly askew on her nose, and the carefully applied makeup she always wore was smudged and streaky on her face. Sweat stained the collar and underarms of her shirt, and I caught a glimpse of darkness beneath her breasts before she huffed and folded her arms across them.
“Maybe you should go wash up first,” I said, barely able to keep the chuckle out of my voice.
“Thank you,” she said sarcastically. “You’re so kind, Mr. Jervis. The epitome of generosity. People thought Ebenezer Scrooge was giving when he bought that fuckin’ goose for the Cricket family on Christmas? That’s nothing, nothing, I say!”
“Cratchit.”
“What?”
“The Cratchit family. Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Not Cricket.”
“Nerd,” she muttered.
“Watch the tone.”
“What’re you gonna do, fire me?” she snapped, turning on her heel so she could go to the back room.
I sighed as she left. She was a back-talking, bold, hard-boiled bitch sometimes, but I couldn’t fire her. For one thing, not a lot of people wanted to work at The Enchanted Florist. For another, lateness and attitude aside, she was a damn good employee. She had the kind of mind I needed as a small-business owner, that unique way of seeing things that saved money and sold product.
The fact that she knew it made her difficult, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Most of the time, she wasn’t in nearly as bad a mood as she was that day. Her mood seemed to fill the small store, heavy and humid in the air until I was as grumpy as she was.
“I’m heading out now,” I said when she returned to the front ten minutes later with her makeup redone and in a new shirt. “I had to stay late since my next shift didn’t show up.”
“It’s not staying late if it means you can’t leave as early as you want to.”
“Do you know how many hours I work a week?”
“Not my fault you’re a workaholic. Maybe you should try to get laid once in a while. You know, two birds, one stone. Less work, less high-strung since you’d actually get off.”
“Watch it or I’ll call HR on you,” I warned.
“You finally hired an actual HR person?” she shot back. “Is that who I should talk to about getting a raise?”
I rolled my eyes. Of course I hadn’t hired HR. I had two employees. But she wasn’t wrong about being a workaholic who needed to get laid, unfortunately. I was leaving the store early, sure, but I left early on Fridays mostly so I could have a beer and sit on my balcony while I was getting the paperwork ready for the following week. That was my version of a night off.
“Whatever,” I muttered. “Just the usual tasks for tonight. Inventory, prep the delivery book for tomorrow morning, write off the dead stuff, fill the buckets, clean the—”
“Wow, it’s almost like I haven’t worked here for four years,” she said monotonously. “I know how to close the store, you know.”
“—and be nice to the customers, for once in your damn life,” I finished.
She flipped me off and grabbed a stool, dragging it behind her into the cooler so she could start the inventory. Rolling my eyes, I grabbed my bag and knocked on the cooler glass. Lyla and I waved at each other and I left the shop in her capable hands.
I lived in the apartments three blocks down from the shop, so I rarely drove to work. I also hadn’t been outside since I’d arrived just before nine that morning. Lyla was right; it was hot as balls outside. As soon as the door swung closed behind me, I felt like the air was wrapped around me. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze, and the humidity was so high that even walking as fast as I could didn’t create a draft.
I was just walking through the parking lot of the building when that changed. The sticky heat seemed to scatter as the wind picked up. One moment, sweat was dripping down my forehead and into the corners of my eyes; the next, I was leaning into the wind as I rushed to the front door of the building.
Lyla might have been late, but she hadn’t arrived a moment too soon. Between the time I got into the building and took the elevator up to the fourth floor, then opened my apartment, the clouds had exploded into a complete downpour.
“Jesus,” I muttered, striding across to my balcony to look out at the rain. I could barely see the street. The rain came down in sheets, nearly sideways at points, and I could already see water starting to pool in the parking lot below.
Maybe it wouldn’t last long, I thought. One of those quick downpours, just enough to get everything wet, and then it would move on.
Just as I thought it, lightning flashed across the sky. Before the line of light had faded from my vision, thunder roared behind it. Seconds later, another flash of lightning, showing the dark grey clouds covering the entire sky.
So much for having a beer on the balcony.
Still, I was stubborn. I took my laptop out of its case and set it up on the kitchen table instead, then grabbed the beer I intended to have. The building was old, so the soundproofing wasn’t exactly the greatest. Thunder rolled and rain pounded; wind howled and lightning flashed. It would fade for a few minutes only to re-invigorate itself, but I managed to ignore it completely as I immersed myself into my sales software.
Three-quarters of my beer was gone when the world went dark.
It was barely after five p.m., but the sky was so clouded over that hardly any light was filtering in through my balcony door. I blinked, momentarily unbalanced, and let my eyes adjust. Aside from my laptop, all the ambient light in my apartment was gone. The clock on the stove was black, the LED on the TV had disappeared, and the hum of my refrigerator had gone quiet.
A power outage.
“Great,” I muttered.
I waited for the backup generator to kick in, but when a few minutes went by and it hadn’t, I strode to the door and looked into the hallway. None of the emergency lights were on there, either, so I had to assume the generator was busted, too.
Sighing, I closed the door. My laptop battery was a third full, so I drained the beer I had, opened the unlit fridge to quickly grab another one, and sat back down at my kitchen table.
Within moments of cracking the new beer, my cell phone rang.
“Hi, Lyla,” I said without looking.
“The power’s out,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“It’s been out for five minutes,” I said. “Wait and see if it comes back on.”
“Thanks, genius. What am I supposed to do while I’m waiting for that to happen?”
“Inventory?”
“In the dark?”
“Get the delivery stuff ready.”
“Computer’s not working.”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Lyla. Sit around and wait for it to come back on.”
“You’re the boss.”
Before I could say anything else, she hung up and I rolled my eyes.
It was a few minutes later when I realized the fatal flaw in my plan to continue working: no power meant no internet, and no internet meant no access to the cloud.
“Fuck!” I whispered when the error message popped up.
The laptop was old, there was no way around that. If the power didn’t come back on soon, it’d likely die before I could get it reconnected, and I’d lose everything I had just done. Annoyed, I took another swig of beer before closing the laptop, then realized just how dark my small apartment was. Apartments aren’t usually known for their abundance of windows in the first place, but I only had a small window in my bedroom in addition to the balcony door.
I didn’t have a flashlight, but I was pretty sure there were some candles in the bathroom that my ex-girlfriend had left there a few years earlier. By the dim flashlight on my phone, I guided myself into the pitch-black bathroom. It was while I was digging through the cupboard trying to find something that smelled like marshmallow sugar cookies that I heard a faint woman’s voice.
“Can anyone hear me?”
I straightened up, frowning. “Hello?”
There was a pause, then someone banged on one of the connecting walls. “Hello?!”
“Who… what?” I asked.
“I need help!” said the voice. “Where are you?”
“Me?” I said. “I’m in my apartment. Where are you?”
“I’m in my apartment.”
I stared at the wall for a moment. “Like, in the same universe as my apartment, or are we talking across the space-time continuum or something?”
“This isn’t funny!” she sobbed.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny,” I said.
“Are you going to help me or what?”
“I don’t know who you are, where you are, how you can hear me, or what you need,” I said stiffly. “So I guess if you want my help, I need to know at least two of those things.”
She was silent for a moment.
“My name is Meg,” she finally said. “I’m in apartment three-twelve. I’m in the shower and everything went dark and I’m scared. I just moved in and I can’t see anything.”
Meg in apartment three-twelve. She was directly below me, so that explained both where she was and why she could hear me through the plumbing.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, you can’t see anything because the power’s out.”
“I figured that much!” she snapped.
I sighed. “Look, if you’re just going to yell at me, I’ll go and—”
“No, no, no!” she cried, and I heard a choked sniffle through the plumbing. “Please. I’m scared of the dark. Don’t laugh at me, I’m just… I’m so scared right now.”
The waver in her voice tugged at my heart and I sighed. “Fine. You want me to come to get you or…?”
“Please,” said Meg. “The code to the door is four-eight-one-two. I just… if you can just bring me a flashlight so I can find mine, that’s all I need. I’m too scared to move.”
I wasn’t reluctant to help because I didn’t like helping people. I was reluctant to help because she was the second person to snap at me that day. Still, that wasn’t exactly Meg’s fault. I couldn’t blame her for being scared and on edge, though if it were me, I would have been a little more polite to the person I was asking for help.
For my own peace of mind, though, not helping her wasn’t an option.
“I’ll be right there,” I promised. “I’m just up the stairs from you. Hold on.”
“Thank you so much,” came the response, both higher-pitched and slightly thicker than before.
I abandoned my search for candles, assuming my phone would be enough to help Meg out. It was all I grabbed before going to the hallway, jogging down the stairs, and heading to apartment three-twelve.
Once I was there, I hesitated, staring at the keypad. It wasn’t that I couldn’t remember the code, but if the power was out…
Carefully, I typed in the number she’d given me and breathed a sigh of relief when the mechanism clicked loudly. It must have had a backup battery, which was good to know. I made a mental note to replace mine when I had a chance.
The door swung open quietly. I waited for a moment, then remembered the power was out so it wasn’t going to get any brighter, and rolled my eyes at my stupidity as I walked in.
“Hello?” I called.
Thunder cracked just as I did and I waited until the roll faded before trying again.
“Meg?”
“In here,” came the small response.
The layout of her apartment was identical to mine, so I knew where “here” was. The dim light of my phone led the way past cardboard boxes and mismatched furniture. She wasn’t exaggerating; from the looks of it, she had literally just moved in, maybe that day or the day before.
Knocking softly, I opened the bathroom door. The flashlight on my phone lit the room up exponentially brighter than it had been, and the shower curtain rustled as a head shyly poked out from behind it.
I didn’t know if many women thought that “interrupted-mid-shower” look worked. On top of that, cell phone flashlights don’t offer the most flattering lighting. It might have explained why the woman behind the shower curtain looked slightly ashamed, although it also could have been having to call a stranger into her apartment to help her get out of said shower. Either way, all of those handicaps were a good thing because, even in less-than-optimal lighting with a small amount of her face poking out and suds still clinging to her hair, she was the most beautiful woman I’d seen in my entire life.
She was younger than me, maybe in her late twenties. Soaking wet hair clung to the side of her face and her round eyes were almost black in the darkness. Her nose turned up just slightly and her mouth, though tensed with worry, was full and pink. I couldn’t see even a hint of her body behind the shower curtain, but my mind started filling in the blanks without my permission. I felt my face going warm and tore my eyes away guiltily.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Owen.”
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Meg. Um, pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain?”
I chuckled nervously. “I’ll, uh, turn around if you want to get out.”
Without waiting for a response, I angled the phone towards her and turned the other direction. The image of her was seared in my mind, including the parts I couldn’t see, and I tried everything I could to think of something else so my blood stopped rushing to places I didn’t really want it to be.
There was no noise for a moment, then the shower curtain rustled again and the rings made a metallic sound as they slid along the curtain rod. I refused to picture Meg’s glistening body as it stepped over the edge of the tub and onto the mat, absolutely refused to think of it, not when there were things like trying to add up my previous week’s sales numbers that I could be thinking about.
I was trying to do the math in my head when the deep swooping sound of skin sliding on porcelain broke through and Meg cried out.
I turned around instinctively as the shower curtain rustled frantically, stepping across the bathroom just in time to catch her as she yanked the curtain from the rod and tripped forward out of the shower. She wasn’t very heavy, but the angle was awkward and I teetered off-balance. Meg clutched the shower curtain with one hand and my arm with the other as I tried to control my fall, ending up seated on her bathroom floor near the heat register as she tumbled into my lap.
Thank God those math equations had done the trick, otherwise things might have been really uncomfortable.
“Oh my God,” she choked.
She tried to scramble out of my lap, but the shower curtain got caught around her legs and she slipped again. Her knee came dangerously close to an area I definitely didn’t want to be kneed, though I was distracted when she pitched forward and something—well, some things—soft and round and delightfully warm pressed against my shirt.
I refused to think of what those somethings were, given the position of her knee, but she knew I had felt them. Her face turned such a bright shade of red that it was almost glowing in the dim light.
I couldn’t help it; I laughed.
“It’s not funny,” she said indignantly. “It’s not!”
“Okay,” I said, chuckling. “Sure. It’s not.”
“Stop laughing at me,” she said, punctuating it with a sniff.
I did stop laughing when I realized those big eyes were wet, and it wasn’t because she had just fallen out of the shower.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said as she blinked rapidly. “Look, it’s just not every day that some girl literally sweeps me off my feet. I’m just counting my blessings.”
She sniffed again, then snorted, a tiny laugh that started undoing all the work that math problem had done.
“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to distract myself.
She nodded but didn’t move off my lap. After a moment, she shook her head and made another soft sniffing sound.
“I’m embarrassed,” she said. “I had to scream through the walls to get your help, and then I was kind of mean to you, and then I had to admit that I’m so scared of the dark I couldn’t even get out of my shower, and then I fell out of the shower and ripped my new shower curtain and I’m just a complete mess.”
There were a few drops of water on her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. I felt bad for her, but I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to hug her, but the only thing separating most of her naked body from me was a thin shower curtain, not to mention I was a complete stranger sitting with her in the dark. She was already embarrassed; I didn’t need to make her uncomfortable, too.
“You’re not a mess,” I said instead. “You just got out of the shower. I’d say you’re probably squeaky clean.”
She made that tiny, snorting laugh again, this time with those full lips flicking up into a little smile. I quickly thought of my sales numbers again.
“C’mon,” I said. “I’d say let me help you up, but you’re kinda… well. Let me, uh, get this part of the curtain…”
As carefully as I could, I helped her untangle the shower curtain, determinedly avoiding looking at her as she unfolded her legs and shimmied awkwardly off my lap while trying to cover herself with the edge of the shower curtain.
“Don’t look,” she pleaded.
I held my hands up to my eyes. “Can’t see a thing.”
She giggled and I felt her move past me, then felt a slight breeze as she pulled a towel off the rack nearby. The towel dropped to the ground a few moments later and I heard her pick up something else, then felt something soft brush against my arm.
“Okay,” she said a moment after that. “I’m covered.”
When I took my hand off my eyes, she was standing on the other side of the bathroom enrobed in a plush pink housecoat, the belt knotted tightly around her waist. It was my first real glimpse of her that didn’t involve a shower curtain, and I liked what I saw. I liked the way her eyes looked at me cautiously, I liked the gentle curves I could just make out beneath the robe, and I liked the way her legs peeked out from the bottom of it.
I looked at her for all of a second while I decided I liked all those things, then stood up and hoped it hadn’t been too obvious.
“Great,” I said. “So, where’s your flashlight?”
She bit her lip. “I think maybe in one of the boxes?”
I let her lead the way out of the bathroom and back to her living room. She found her phone and flicked the flashlight on, but couldn’t find a good place to balance it so she could see and search at the same time. Instead, I offered to hold my phone’s flashlight up so she could look. She stared at the boxes for a moment before picking the first one and opening it.
“When did you move in?” I asked.
“Monday,” she said in a soft voice. “I mean, technically Monday. My stuff got here yesterday.”
“Technically?
“I started living here Monday.”
“Without your stuff?”
“I had some stuff. The rest was delayed by the movers.” She opened another box. “My old roommates were assholes. I just wanted to get out of there and into my own place, but I couldn’t get a truck or anything until later in the week, so I just grabbed what I could.”
“Oh.”
Another box opened and this time she dug into it hopefully. “Sorry. I also packed really quickly, so I’m not sure… but I think it might be this one.”
“No rush. I have nowhere to be.”
She looked up from the box and smiled. “Thanks.”
It wasn’t in that box, or the next one. Meg sighed impatiently as she pulled another box open while I held the flashlight.
“Is it weird if I offer to help?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t mind, but I don’t want you to think I’m just going through all your stuff.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “If you’d be willing… I mean, I’d appreciate it.”
I nodded and picked one of the boxes to let my phone rest on while I opened another. The first one just held boxed pantry items, so I moved that to the side and opened the next.
That one was full of sex toys.
No amount of sales numbers in the world could stop me from imagining where those had been.
I stared for a moment, then glanced up at Meg. She was bent over another box and facing away from me, so I started to close the box very slowly, hoping she wouldn’t notice that I opened it. When she suddenly straightened up and whirled around with a triumphant cry, I nearly knocked it over.
“Found it!” she declared, turning the flashlight on.
“Great!” I said a little too enthusiastically. “Awesome!”
Meg smiled, her face relieved and finally relaxed.
“Thanks, Owen,” she said. “You’re my hero.”
I laughed uncomfortably, still trying to distract myself from the toy box, and started edging towards the door. “I dunno about that. Just helping out a neighbour.”
Her smile didn’t fade, but some of the sparkle faded from her eyes. “Well, you’re a really good neighbour.”
“Keep that in mind in case I throw any rowdy parties,” I joked. “Being your upstairs neighbour, you’ll get the brunt of the noise.”
“Well, just as long as you and your girlfriend keep it down,” she teased.
I laughed. “Don’t worry, she’s pretty quiet, being imaginary and all.”
Meg smiled and glanced down. “I’ll have to find some way to thank you.”
I waved it off. “No worries. I’m sure I’ll need a favour sometime. Anyway, if you need anything else, you know where I live.”
She nodded and I excused myself, my heart racing and my cheeks warm as I let the door close behind me. Meg was unreasonably hot and it was an unreasonably weird situation; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been that close to a naked woman, which was sad in itself, but I was supposed to be helping her.
I took the stairs back up to my apartment two at a time, swallowing hard when I got to the top. Now that she wasn’t in front of me, I wasn’t forcing myself to be distracted, and the erection I’d been trying to hold off was becoming insistently hard. I hoped no one would come down the hall while I was walking towards my apartment.
No one did, luckily, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached for the keypad on my door, typing in the code with shaking fingers.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, I typed it again, then tried the handle. It was locked, and I also realized the buttons weren’t lighting up.
“Fuck,” I muttered. “Oh, fuck.”
I tried it one more time, hoping against hope that it would work, but it was entirely hopeless: the backup battery on my door was obviously dead.
Groaning, I rested my forehead on the door. My cock was throbbing in my pants and I glanced to the left and right before quickly adjusting myself. Taking a deep breath, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called my landlord.
It rang four times, then went to voicemail. Sighing, I tried again.
“James speaking,” he answered on the second ring.
“Hey James,” I said. “It’s Owen in four-twelve. My door keypad isn’t working and I’m locked out.”
“Power’s out,” he said. “So the keypad should use the battery.”
“I think the battery’s dead.”
“Did you try typing the code in again? You sure you did it right?”
“Yeah, I tried three times. The lights aren’t on. I’m locked out. Can you bring me the master key?”
“I can’t right now,” he said. “The backup generator’s not working. If it works, you won’t be locked out anymore, so you just have to wait, okay?”
I groaned. “Come on, seriously? It’ll take five seconds for you to bring the keys up and—”
“Owen, man, I know. You’ve lived here for eight years, I know. I know, I know. I literally have my arm stuck in the generator trying to fix it and I’m covered in gasoline. I want to help, but you gotta wait, okay? You’re not the only one locked out, even though you’re all supposed to change the backup battery once a year like it says in your lease...”
I chuckled softly. “I don’t remember reading that.”
“I know, man, I know. No one reads that shit. It’s okay, I get it. Look, I'll tell you what, if you come to—”
The line went silent.
“James?” I said. “Come to where?”
No response. I pulled the phone away from my ear and nearly threw it on the ground when I realized the battery was dead.
Instead, I laughed dryly and shook my head, kicking my door half-heartedly. It was unlikely either of my neighbours were home yet, and the apartment across the hall was vacant. Even if they were home, I had no idea if they had a battery pack I could use, though maybe someone would let me use their phone.
Someone like Meg.
Before I really thought it through, I was jogging back to her apartment and knocking three times loudly on the door. I waited and was just about to knock again when the door opened.
She had gotten dressed in the few minutes I’d been gone. There was no one in the world who could look as good as Meg did in cutoff shorts and a tank top. I second-guessed my decision to ask for her help since for a moment, all I could do was stare.
“Owen?” she finally asked, a half-smile on her lips.
“My phone died and I’m locked out,” I explained quickly. “Any chance I could borrow your phone to call the landlord?”
The half-smile flickered briefly, fading just slightly.
“Sure,” she said. “Come in.”
I followed her inside, hoping the bulge in my pants wasn’t as obvious as it felt. It twitched needily as I watched Meg’s ass sway beneath her shorts, but I couldn’t look away.
“Thanks,” I said as she turned to hand me her phone. “Do you have his number in here?”
“The landlord?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t save it on my phone. Don’t you have it in… oh, right.”
I laughed softly. “At least we have the same kind of phone. Any chance you have a battery pack and a charger I could borrow?”
She laughed and nodded. “It’s in my room next to the bed. I’ll show you.”
Of course it was next to the bed.
She didn’t seem inclined to get it and bring it to the living room, so I followed her to the bedroom. After plugging my phone in, I stood there awkwardly, waiting for it to maintain enough of a charge to turn on. Meg stood at the foot of her bed, arms crossed beneath her breasts, her eyes not quite meeting mine. I worked very hard to not notice that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
A flash of lightning lit up the room, followed by a roll of thunder. I tore my eyes away from Meg and glanced at my phone.
“Didn’t have to wait long to cash in that favour, eh?” I said, chuckling awkwardly.
“I’m surprised this is what you cashed it in on,” she said idly.
I raised my eyebrows, glancing at her. “What do you mean?”
Meg pressed her lips together, her cheeks the slightest shade of pink in the white light from the flashlight. After a moment her eyes flicked up, wide and bright in the dimly lit room.
“Well, I thought maybe you’d ask me to have dinner with you or something.”
I don’t know what the expression on my face looked like, but it was enough to make her snort softly and then dissolve into giggles.
“I was kind of sad when you didn’t.”
“Sorry,” I said, still shocked. “I… wow.”
“I was trying to hit on you, you know,” she said. “Do you not like me or were you just being polite?”
“You were?” I repeated. “I… it was neither of those, I was trying to…”
“You’re that oblivious?”
My face was getting warm. “I guess so.”
She made that soft little snorting sound again.
“What were you trying to do?” she asked flirtily, taking a step towards me.
My heart started racing and my cock was starting to ache. Meg was looking up at me, and when she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit it softly, I was lost.
“Well,” I said, my voice wavering. “I mean, a gorgeous naked girl literally fell into my lap. I was trying not t-to… you know.”
“Know what?”
I cleared my throat. “React.”
She glanced down again as she stepped even closer. “You didn’t seem to be successful.”
“That was after,” I blurted. “I was doing pretty good until I found your box of sex toys and couldn’t stop thinking about you using them.”
She stopped suddenly, her eyes going wide. “You found what?”
I cursed myself for saying something so stupid until she started laughing.
“You know, I was kind of down when you left so suddenly because I was like, ‘damn, he was super cute and I would’ve totally slept with him, and I don’t even know where my toys are.’ And suddenly I have you and I know where they are.”
“I can leave you alone if you need a few minutes,” I said.
The sparkle in her eyes faded again and she swallowed hard.
“Or I can stay,” I added. “I mean I’ll still ask you to have dinner with me sometime but…”
She giggled as my voice cracked. “Stay and watch or stay and join?”
“Yeah, whatever, both sound good, but I mean, you’re already all the way over here and that box was in the living room so…”
She was grinning when she closed the final gap between us, reaching up to pull my face down to kiss her. I could barely believe what was happening, even as her soft mouth pressed to mine, even as I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her body close so she could feel just how strongly I was reacting to her. She gasped softly as she felt the bulge between us. I couldn’t stop myself from trailing my hands along her body, touching her sides and her back and daring to cup her perfect ass in my palms. She giggled as I did, grinning against my mouth.
“D’you want me to slow down?” I mumbled.
She sighed with mock impatience. “Owen, you have to be the most oblivious person I’ve ever met.”
“What? I’m just trying to make sure you—”
“Yes,” she interrupted. “Yes, I’m sure, yes I want you, yes I might be hopped up on adrenaline from being terrified. And yes, I might’ve just moved out of a bad roommate situation and am still piecing my life together and yes, I’m a gigantic mess, but right now, I really, really just want to fuck you.”
I swallowed hard, not even willing to begin questioning how I’d gotten so lucky. “If you insist.”
“I do.” She tapped my chest again. “Lie down.”
I sat on the edge of her bed and slid back. Moments later she joined me, crawling on top of me and spreading her legs so she was straddling my hips. I groaned as she dipped down, kissing me again, and this time when her breasts pressed against my chest, I let myself relish in the feeling of them.
I wanted my hands to be everywhere on her, but I started with her hips. I gripped them lightly, using them as leverage to grind her body on mine, exhaling heavily at the gentle friction against my cock. A breathy giggle was my reward and she shifted her hips, making me groan again.
I brought my hands up her sides, feeling the curve of her waist that I’d been dying to touch since seeing the belt of her pink robe cinched around it. Then her ribs, my hands moving along the thin fabric of her tank top and feeling the rise and fall of her quickening breath. The underside of her breasts skimmed the tops of my fingers.
“Can I…?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
The weight of her breast in my palm was heaven. Beneath the fabric of her tank top, I could feel her nipple hardening, the little nub pressing against my palm as I caressed her. Meg made a quiet noise against my mouth and wriggled her hips again.
“More, please,” she whispered. “If you don’t mind?”
Like I was going to turn that down.
I took her eagerness to mean that I could skip the part where I let my hand creep beneath her top and up her stomach to her breasts and go right to tugging the tank top over her head. It was the right choice; she pulled away from my mouth and sat up, lifting her top off and dropping it to the floor. I had all of a second to stare at her perfect tits before she was tugging at my shirt. Without moving my eyes off her chest, I pulled my shirt up, blocking my view of her breasts for the shortest possible time I could.
As soon as it was off, I sat up. Meg laughed in surprise, but the laugh turned to something far throatier as I dipped my head to her cleavage. I kissed the tops of her breasts tenderly before moving my mouth to the one I’d cupped through her shirt, desperately needing to taste that hard little nipple.
She moaned and pressed my head closer to her; I lifted my other hand to her other breast and cupped it as I flicked my tongue against her nipple. The other nipple pressed against my hand and I lifted my head to taste that one, too, making Meg inhale sharply.
By the flashes of lightning and the ghostly light from her flashlight, I explored Meg’s body. There was nowhere I didn’t want to touch. I had to feel her breasts as much as I had to feel the curve of her waist and the softness of her back. I had to dig my fingers into her ass cheeks and trail my hands along her thighs. I couldn’t say I actively decided to do any of those things; I simply did what my body demanded I do, touched the places my hands begged to touch and kissed Meg again and again as she sat on my lap.
She let me explore her body thoroughly before her fingers wrapped around my wrist, stopping my hand from moving back up her sides again.
“My turn to touch,” she said, then poked me in the chest until I was on my back again.
I did so with a smile on my face, one that grew when her fingers moved to the button of my jeans. Lightning flashed, light reflecting in Meg’s eyes as she looked up at me and licked her lips. The expression on her face was almost enough to make me come right then and there.
I didn’t, of course, but damn if she wasn’t the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
She unbuttoned my jeans quickly, tugging the zipper down carefully before spreading my jeans open. My cock nearly shot out of the denim prison, restrained mostly by my boxers, and I couldn’t stop the sigh of relief that accompanied it. Meg glanced back up to me, a tantalizing little half-smile on her mouth.
“That’s quite a reaction,” she teased. “Lucky me.”
I didn’t know how people thought of clever things to say like that. I could barely think, could barely remember my own name, and yet she was saying sexy things in that husky, breathy voice, making my cock twitch without even touching it.
And oh God, did I want her to touch it. Her hands were on my thighs, moving slowly up towards the waistband of my boxers. I wanted her hands on my cock so badly it almost hurt. It was all I could do to keep quiet because if I started to speak, it would just be a constant stream of me begging her to touch my cock, to please just touch my cock, I desperately needed her to touch my—
“Oh, my God,” I groaned as she finally pressed her hand against it, gripping it lightly through my boxers.
She giggled softly and rubbed her hand up and down. My eyes closed and I tilted my head back on the pillow, my mind consumed with the sensation of her hand actually touching me.
“I’ve barely done anything yet,” she said.
“It’s been a while,” I said hoarsely.
“If you think this feels good, wait till I get it in my mouth.”
She laughed as my cock twitched beneath her palm, then decided to stop torturing me and pulled my jeans and boxers down at the same time. I opened my eyes and watched as she stared at my cock, a hungry look in her eyes before she glanced up and smiled.
Without saying anything or breaking eye contact, she wrapped her fingers around me. I held her gaze as long as I could, but when she started pumping her hand up and down in long, firm strokes, I had to watch. I had to see what my cock looked like in her hand.
It looked as good as it felt, and it felt amazing. My lips were parted as I watched her stroke me, her hand spreading precum along my shaft. I was so entranced by the way her hand moved that I barely noticed her nestling between my legs and lowering her head until her lips were almost on the head of my cock.
“Oh God,” I whispered as her breath brushed against my tip.
She glanced up at me, eyes sparkling as she smirked, and then her lips were wrapped around my cock and I was firmly in heaven.
Flashes of light filled the room as Meg began to bob her head on my cock. At first I didn’t want to move, afraid that if I touched her hair or pushed my hips forward, she’d stop, and I would’ve given almost anything to keep her from stopping. Slowly, though, I gained more confidence, and the next time thunder roared, I moved my hand to her still-wet hair.
She sucked my cock eagerly, stroking the shaft as her mouth worked my tip. After a while, she started swallowing more of it, shoving my cock down her throat until I could feel her choking on it.
It might have been a while since I’d gotten laid, but I was damn sure this was the best blowjob I’d ever gotten in my life. I didn’t usually finish in a girl’s mouth; it wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I always had that little tingle of guilt that they weren’t getting off on it the way I was. With Meg, I didn’t feel that guilt. Part of it was how good she was at sucking cock; the other part of it was watching her enthusiastically suck me, her enjoyment so genuine I could feel it. Her breasts bounced as she moved her head, and I could hear muffled moans coming from her mouth as she pumped my cock.
Whether I wanted to or not, there was no way I could hold back.
“I’m gonna come in your mouth,” I gasped. “I swear to God I’ll do whatever you want to make you come after, but please don’t stop.”
My cock felt like it was halfway down her throat and a noise vibrated through it. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or moaning or what, but the feeling was incredible. I was panting, my heart pounding and surging. My hand was still on her head and I dared to press down, just a bit, my cock pushing just a bit deeper into her throat. I stopped pressing when she gagged, but to my surprise, she didn’t move.
Well, she did. She moved forward more, and her nose pressed against my pelvis.
“Gonna come,” I gasped. “Holy fuck, Meg, I’m coming.”
Her mouth didn’t move off my cock as it pulsed, spilling spurt after spurt of cum down her throat. I stared down at her, drawing in ragged breaths as I came. All I could feel was relief, the release of pressure coursing through my body, and all I could focus on was the way her pretty lips stretched around me, the way her gorgeous eyes stared up at me, and the way that I had barely finished coming before I was thinking about sinking my cock into her pussy.
I’d never felt like that; I’d never wanted someone as much as I wanted Meg.
I worked on catching my breath as she moved back, swallowing as my cock fell from her mouth.
“You came so much,” she said, giggling as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re really, uh, good at that.”
“Thanks,” she said brightly. “Now, I seem to remember some sort of promise to make me come however I wanted?”
“I’m yours.”
She was not at all shy about directing me to do exactly what she wanted, and what she wanted was to sit on my face.
I eagerly and whole-heartedly accepted my new-found passion of becoming her chair.
She peeled her shorts off. It was so dark in the room and she undressed so quickly that I couldn’t see what her panties looked like, but it didn’t matter. As soon as her legs were on either side of my head, I could see exactly what I needed to.
Her pussy was soaked, and I stuck my tongue out eagerly as she lowered herself onto my face. The sweet, warm scent of her juices filled my senses, and as soon as I could taste her, I was lost. There was no teasing her; even if I wanted to, she was in control of my face. I didn’t really want to, either. I wanted her pussy, I wanted to taste her, I wanted to feel her body shudder as I flicked my tongue against her clit and licked up and down her folds.
She was intoxicating. Her skin was soft and clean, her pussy soaked and more delicious than anything I’d ever tasted. I couldn’t get enough of her taste and her scent. I could hear her moaning, muffled from the thighs pressing against my ears, but loud enough that it was only interrupted by the occasional crash of thunder. Her hips shifted, grinding her sweet folds on my face. My view was perfect; her perfect stomach, the swell of her perfect tits, and the occasional glimpse of her perfect, beautiful face as she gazed down at me with her pussy pressed to my lips.
“Yes, Owen,” she moaned. Lightning flashed and illuminated her face, her skin flushed as she bit her lip.
I couldn’t speak, of course, but I groaned against her. My cock hadn’t gone fully soft after she’d made me come, and I could feel it thickening again. It throbbed as she started panting, and precum started dripping as her hips rolled, grinding her clit harder against my tongue. The shallow breaths I managed to take through my nose were thick with the scent of her pussy, and when her body finally started shaking and her moans became louder and higher-pitched, I was almost light-headed.
Her body shuddered on top of me, her pussy spasming as a gush of juice spilled against my face. I lapped at it eagerly as she came, riding my face and practically suffocating me with her pussy. Her thighs tightened around my head and her weight was heavy against me, but I was still almost disappointed when she pulled herself away.
“Wow,” she said as she moved off of me. “Wow, Owen.”
“Wow, yourself,” I said, grinning.
She reached over and wiped some of the juices that were soaking my face with her thumb. Before she could pull that away, too, I caught her wrist and took her thumb in my mouth. She giggled, her eyes flicking down and widening when she realized I was hard again.
“Already?” she teased.
“What can I say?” I asked. “You’re fucking incredible.”
“Luckily, I’m also incredible at fucking.” She licked her lips as she moved to the edge of the bed. “Let me grab a condom. I even know where they are.”
“The giant box of sex toys?”
“It’s not giant!” she said indignantly before rushing out of the room.
She returned moments later, already tearing the condom open before handing it to me. I managed to get it on without fumbling that much, but before I could sit up or ask her what she liked, she was pushing me on my back again.
“You like to be in control, eh?” I laughed.
“Is that a complaint?” she asked, pausing with her pussy hovering over my cock.
“God, no.”
She smiled as she guided my cock inside her, both of us sighing as the head of my cock spread her lips open and probed inside her tight pussy. She sank down on top of me, taking inch after inch of my cock until my pelvis was flush against her lips and I was completely buried inside her.
I pushed up against her, loving the sound she made as she started grinding herself against me, entranced by the view of her gorgeous body hovering over me. Her breasts rose and fell as she breathed deeply, and she had just started moving her hips when my phone started ringing.
I grimaced. Of course it picked that moment to be charged enough to ring. Meg leaned forward to look at it.
“Who’s Lyla?” she asked, her tits hovering over my face. “Your imaginary girlfriend?”
“Ugh, no,” I grunted. “My employee.”
“Employee?” she said. “What are you the boss of?”
“I’ll tell you all about it after I make you come again,” I said desperately.
It was then I learned about Meg’s evil streak. She giggled, stopped rolling her hips, and grabbed my phone.
“No, don’t—” I started, but it was too late.
She swiped the screen and for half a heartbeat, I thought she was going to talk to Lyla, but Meg grinned and pressed the phone to my ear. For a moment, I didn’t say anything.
“...Owen?” Lyla said on the other end. “Hello?”
“Hey,” I said as evenly as I could.
Too evenly, apparently, because Meg frowned, then started riding my cock.
“...supposed to sit here doing nothing?”
I had no idea what Lyla had just said, my eyes glued to Meg’s breasts as they bounced.
“Owen! Did you hear me? What are you even doing right now?” Lyla asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, just wait and see how long it lasts. I’m sure it’ll be back on soon.”
“And if it isn’t?” she asked haughtily.
I managed to keep my voice steady, though it was a damn struggle as Meg bounced on my cock.
“If it’s not back on by seven, go ahead and lock up for the night,” I said as smoothly as I could. “But I’m sure it will be. The storm’ll likely be over by then.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
I rolled my eyes and practically threw my phone across the room as Meg laughed.
“You’re evil,” I gasped.
“Yep,” she said, still fucking me as hard as her hips could go. “What are you gonna do about it?”
I showed her exactly what I was going to do about it by sitting up. She squealed as I managed to move out from under her, then laughed and struggled half-heartedly as I flipped her onto her hands and knees. I was sure she let me win, but it didn’t matter; both of us won when I shoved her down on the mattress, grabbed her hips, and plunged my cock back inside her.
Her ass was amazing. It rippled as I fucked her, and jiggled as I slapped it, making her shriek. She clutched at the bedsheets, moaning as the sound of our bodies slapping together filled her room. I moved inside her hard, greedily taking what I could from her body until I was sweating and panting. When I was forced to slow down, I wrapped an arm around her and fingered her clit, working the sensitive little nub until Meg was shrieking and shaking and coming on my cock.
The pulses of her pussy were more than I could handle, and it wasn’t much longer before I was coming again. I grunted and dug my hands into her hips, slamming her body back against me as I came.
There was a long moment of mindless bliss, my mind quiet and my body satiated. I didn’t move, holding Meg’s hips to keep her in place with my cock still inside her, my eyes closed as I tilted my head back and caught my breath. After that moment of mindlessness, I let go of her, pulling out as she collapsed forward on the bed and rolled over, her eyes closed.
“You okay?” I asked.
Her eyes half-opened and she grinned. “Very okay.”
I laughed and moved off the bed to clean up, then came back and lay down beside her.
“So, welcome to the building,” I said.
“Do you welcome all your new neighbours so thoroughly?”
“Well, I figured since you were living under me anyways…”
She smacked my arm lightly but laughed.
“You’re horrible, by the way,” I said. “Putting me on the phone like that.”
“Worth it, if it made you fuck me like that.”
I couldn’t exactly argue, so just smiled as she pulled herself into my arms.
“What’re you the boss of?” she asked.
“The Enchanted Florist,” I said.
“The flower shop?” she asked, not bothering to hide her surprise.
“I know. I don’t look like a florist.”
“Nah,” she said. “I was gonna say that means I can expect the nicest flowers, right?”
Cautiously optimistic delight filled my chest. “Well, sure. I guess if I have a reason to get you flowers.”
“You will, when you take me to dinner once this whole power outage thing is over.”
“I’d be honoured.”
“Of course you would,” she said. “I’ve already proven I put out, so…”
We were laughing when my phone buzzed again from the floor near the bed.
“Answer that. Poor Lyla probably wants to go home,” Meg said.
“I dunno about ‘poor Lyla,’” I muttered, but rolled over to grab the phone and squinted at Lyla’s text message.
7 pm. No power. Going home. BTW as happy as I am that you’re finally getting laid, next time you’re mid-sex with someone plz make sure you hang up the phone before continuing. Or maybe don’t answer your phone mid-sex, that’d be cool too, otherwise I’ll contact HR. PS I’m promoting myself to HR and HR says I’m getting a raise. See u tomorrow perv.
“Fuck,” I muttered, then started laughing.
I wasn’t sure if I could handle facing Lyla, knowing she heard at least a bit of my hookup with Meg, but that was a problem for later. Besides, it was her advice that had started the whole thing. I didn’t want to admit she was right, but as Meg curled up in my arms again, I figured the inevitable “I told you so” was probably worth it.
About The Author:
Cheryl Terra writes romance stories for people who hate romance stories, as well as for people who love romance stories. Writing is one of her greatest passions and she can often be found sitting in front of her laptop, ignoring the world around her as she finds elaborate ways for her characters to hook up with each other. When she’s not doing that, Cheryl enjoys knitting, spending time with her pets, annoying her fiancé, and trying to convince people civilization exists in the vast stretch of Canada between Vancouver and Toronto.
Members of my Patreon community get early access to all stories as well as bonus content such as song pairings, extra scenes, and Q&As. Subscribe to my Patreon to check it out!